


Secrets in the depths

by ixieko



Series: The Ancient story [5]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 16:52:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3141740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ixieko/pseuds/ixieko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gast and Ifalna travel to the Temple of Ancients, while Hojo and Crescent stay in Nibelheim. Ifalna learns the origin of Jenova and the story of Black and White Materia, but what would be the price of this knowledge?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secrets in the depths

Peeling just another spiderweb off her face, Ifalna sighed. The jungle was vast, and unwelcoming, and full of insects - flying, buzzing, biting, getting in her eyes, crawling under her shirt and biting there; she spent evenings trying to comb out all the bugs that climbed into her long hair. She braided it, of course, and was wearing headscarf while on the road, but damned bugs still found their way into her hair.  
She sighed again, stepping over the prominent root and nearly tripping. The jungle looked green and bright from the outside, but here, under the roof of enormous trees, was always twilight; the air was hot and humid, and her clothes were getting wet with her sweat. She would like to wear nothing more than a bikini in such heat, but had to wrap herself in long-sleeved shirt and military-style pants, and wear high boots - most of the insects there were poisonous, some of the plants were carnivorous, and snakes lived in the undergrowth.  
Glancing the direction where Professor Faremis was walking, chatting with one of their guides, - a tall, dark-skinned woman clothed only in jeans shorts and a weird headdress made of feathers, stripes of fur and animal fangs, - she sighed third time in a row. Gast, no less a city dweller than she was, seemingly felt himself at home in this jungle, gracefully avoiding spiderwebs, roots, tree branches and carnivorous vines.  
Other two guides, hunters from the same tribe, were striding behind her, to the left and to the right of their small group, covering it from the rear.

Actually, they did not need three guides, and asked only for one, but the people from this tribe did not enter the Forest of Whispers - the local name for the jungle around the Temple of Ancients - in groups less than three. They would not guide Gast's group at all, but Professor did not come to them with his hands empty; he brought clothes and tools, food and antibiotics, and even a small amount of guns - and, reluctantly, the tribal leader agreed to help them.  
She sent her older daughter with them, though, probably out of respect, but most likely to watch the suspicious outsiders and prevent them from doing anything that could anger the Whispering Souls which, as their tribe believed, resided in the Temple.

Faremis took only Ifalna with him as an assistant; the team of technicians stayed at the shore, setting up a radio repeater on the highest hill around. 

The jungle lay in the middle of big, mostly uninhabited - save for several small, primitive aboriginal tribes, - island, called Woodlands. The Temple was believed to stand in the very center of the jungle, but with every passing day Ifalna more and more feared that they would never reach it, forever lost in the dim labyrinth of tall trees.

"Ah, here it is!" Gast exclaimed suddenly, pointing at something. Ifalna hurried to him and looked.  
The guide nodded - a fast, sharp motion, like a bird pecking a worm, - and said, "Den of Souls."

Before them, obscured by vegetation, stood a colossal, sandy-brown pyramide, towering over the tallest of trees. On the very top of it was a building, resembling a small temple.

Gast motioned her to follow and began to walk down a slope, but the guide stopped them. She pointed forward and said, "Pit. Deep. No road."  
And yes, there was a deep chasm surrounding the pyramid; they had to find a way to get over it.

By the dusk, they still did not find anything and had to stop for night right at the edge of jungle, on a small open patch of stony ground beside the chasm. The fire, as always, attracted all kinds of insects, including pretty large ones, size of a crow; the hunters caught these and began to roast them over the fire. Ifalna went away, to her tent. She did not like insects even when they were alive, and roasted even less so.

...

In the morning, two hunters returned from their nightly exploration, and brought good news: they found the bridge.  
By the midday Gast's group finally arrived to the entrance of Temple of Ancients.

They set up their camp on the edge of jungle, just before the bridge. The guides refused to come any closer to the Temple, afraid of vengeful spirits that could punish them for trespassing onto the forbidden territory. When they were finishing putting up the tents, the sky unexpectedly, rapidly grew dark, and the thunderstorm hit them, pouring heavy rain on their heads.  
"I would not be surprised if our guides took that as a bad omen," Gast grumbled, "It certainly should look like their deities are against us." But tribe leader's daughter overheard him and laughed.  
"No against!" She shouted over the rumble of thunder, "They greet us!"

At the sunset, when the storm ended and the sky cleared, two scientists climbed atop the pyramid to set up radio antenna there. Fortunately, the signal from the shore reached here, and they could communicate with outside world now.

Later, while Professor was studying molding and runes at the Temple's entrance, Ifalna received first reports from both Project G and Project S teams. Hojo's project began according to the plan. The first few injections of Mako, as well as the infusion of Jenova's Type-2 cells into the foetus has gone without any complications.  
It was September already; Lucrecia must have been pregnant for three months now.

When she was ready to turn the apparatus off, it announced the arrival of a new message. It was not coded with Shin-Ra standard algorithm; instead, Morse/r203 was used. It was Ifalna and Lucy's invention of the time they shared the room at the University, named after the number of their room and used just for fun.  
Today's message said, "I see fire".  
"Where," Ifalna sent back, and in answer received no less cryptic:  
"Dreams."

...

The voices of the Spirits there were much more stronger than anywhere Ifalna had been before. Still, she could not understand what they were saying. Their constant murmur did not even let her sleep peacefully; she woke up every night, with a feeling that peddlers had set up a bazaar inside her head, talking loudly in the language she didn't know.

The Temple inside was an enormous labyrinth of passages, stairs and bridges, with daylight coming from square openings in the ceiling. When they first entered it, Ifalna glimpsed something - or, rather, someone - a strange creature, resembling a short, very round human, clothed in purple. It ran quickly and hid behind a pillar.  
"Did you see it?" Gast asked, looking at the place where the creature was a moment ago. Ifalna glanced at the creature, and it shook its head.  
"N-no, I didn't see anything." She said. It looked at her, and suddenly she felt - a hint of foreign emotion, a shadow of other's thought, as if it was thanking her.

...

Gast was taking his time with every small mural and inscription they found; he made dozens of photographs and notes, and Ifalna followed him everywhere, marking their way, drawing the map of the Temple and carrying flashlights, notebooks, additional lenses, and, of course, food and water - because Professor never remembered such mundane things as mealtimes and would work non-stop until he was fainting from hunger and dehydration.

Time and again she saw the same creature - or were there several of them? - and each time she sensed a hint of their thoughts, as if they were trying to communicate with her.

...

A month and a half after they reached their destination, Doctor Hojo sent a casualty report: the Turk, Valentine, was killed in an accident with lab equipment.  
"How did he even manage _that_ ," Gast commented. "All equipment there is quite safe."

The next night, during their communication session, Ifalna sent Lucy a question about the accident. Coded, of course.  
"My fault," was the only response she got.

...

By the beginning of November, they found the way deeper into the Temple, past the labyrinth. The stone bridge without any railings went above the deep, dark, seemingly bottomless chasm. There was no daylight, but the path was highlighted by enchanted torchlights on the walls, that lit up by themselves when the scientists came closer, and went out when they moved too far.

There was a stone basin on the side of the path, filled with a mysterious substance - not quite liquid, not quite mist, - that was swirling constantly and emitting pale glow. The voices of the Spirits were almost unbearably loud around it, and Ifalna winced, rubbing her temple.  
"Do you feel it too?" Gast asked, raising his eyebrows at her.  
She stopped, frozen in place. "I... Uh... Yes, I feel... something," She ended lamely.  
He smiled. "Well, I believe you may have some of Cetra's blood in you, Ifalna."  
"Is that so, Professor," She mumbled, unsure if she should get it as a compliment or as a covert suspicion.  
He laughed. "There is no reason to be afraid of this relation," He said, "Cetra were not _aliens_ or _monsters_ , my dear, they were our distant ancestors. Most of their specific genes were lost, of course, but," He looked away, at the basin, "A few still exist in their descendants. Although, the genotype alone is not enough, and their spiritual practices are, unfortunately, long forgotten." He concluded, smiling sadly at his assistant.  
"Is there no way to restore these practices?" Ifalna asked.  
Gast sighed, "It is impossible, I'm afraid," He said, "Cetra were very different from us in their perception of the world itself. Where we see parts and pieces, they saw the whole. They were magicians - artists, if you wish; and we are engineers. I doubt we could learn to see the world their way."

When they returned outside, the night has already fallen, and the guides left for their nightly hunt. In the absence of terrifying humans, as short as it was, a dozen of small brown monkey-like animals that always were observing their camp from the tree branches around, grew bolder and came down to the tents. Three of them were investigating the contents of the kettle, chattering loudly, two more tried to open one of the backpacks, and several others have found their way into one of the tents.  
Noticing the arrival of humans, monkeys that stayed upon the trees raised a fuss, and all the intruders fled in fear.

The scientists, laughing, cleaned up the mess left by curious creatures, and a short while later went to sleep.

Lying in her tent and listening to the sounds of the never-quieting tropical forest outside, Ifalna remembered Gast's words.  
Cetra saw the world in their own way. Not like humans. Not like scientists.  
Night jungle was living, breathing and talking around her - croaking frogs, chirping insects, sharp voices of birds, occasional howling of some animal... How would her grandmother perceive it?  
Not in bits and pieces, not like a cacophony of disconnected sounds. She would not try to decompose and analyse it; she would hear it as a whole - a music, an ever-changing composition of jungle's harmony.  
She closed her eyes and tried - not to tune out, not to concentrate on details, but the opposite.  
Let all the world in.

When it happened, she did not even get it at first; only a few minutes later she understood that the voices of Spirits grew fainter - became the part of her surroundings - and with that, became clear.  
The Planet, living Planet around her, was singing with its winds, and rivers, and deep grumble of rocks moving in its depths; it was wounded and tired, it cried in pain where it was pierced with sharp needles of reactors, sucking out its blood; and the Spirits were trying to call out to the last keeper of the land, the last Cetra who did not completely give up her nature.  
Surprised, she tried to focus on the voices, but they instantly became unintelligible.  
Releasing her focus, she let her mind wander.

As the world became whole again, she quietly crawled out of her tent and went to the Temple. The Spirits guided her to the stone basin - The Well of Knowledge, they told her. The place where she could find the answers she was seeking.

...

She sat at the edge of the swirling substance, listening to the voices telling her the story of Cetra race and its fall in the war against the enemy that came from the sky.  
They managed to defeat it.  
 _The Thing_ was destroyed.  
The body left in the North Crater was no more than an unfortunate Cetra woman, too infected to withstand Calamity's control and led there by its will.

"Could it control a human, if he was infected with its cells?" She asked the Spirits.  
One of the voices raised above the others. "Calamity's _essence_ was destroyed. It does not have a will anymore, it could not control anyone."  
"Grandmother?" Ifalna whispered, staring into the basin, where constant movement of the substance drew pictures in light and shadows.  
"It is me," Came the answer. "We were waiting for you for a long time. I am glad you have found your way."  
"Are my parents there as well?"  
"They are, but they cannot talk to you yet. It is hard to get to you, child."

Ifalna smiled, closing her eyes. The world was whole, and she knew now where the Promised Land was; someday she will return there and meet her loved ones.

And _The Thing_ was not nearly as dangerous as it seemed before.

Actually, Mako reactors were more dangerous to the Planet; Ifalna was not an engineer, she did not know much about clean energy, but she already was thinking about people in Science Department who could be interested in researching and developing other energy sources. She would have to talk to them - and to Gast - after they returned back to civilization.

...

The next message was, "He will destroy us."  
Ifalna asked, "Who?", and Lucy responded with, "My son."  
She sent, "Why you think so?", but received nothing more.

"Probably, just something hormonal," She thought, staring at the telegraph apparatus, waiting for response that did not come. Everyone knew that pregnant women could be not in their right mind from time to time, and it was normal. _It was normal._

...

With the progression of their research, Gast's mood seemed to worsen. One hot November evening, when they were sitting outside their tents, choosing the constant buzz of mosquitoes over the oppressive heat inside, he put his notebook down, pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned.  
"We almost reached the very heart of the Temple. I now know more about the Cetra race than I ever hoped. And still," He sighed, shaking his head, "Still, Jenova is the same mystery as she was before."  
Ifalna looked at him above her own notebook.  
"There is no mention of Cetra being physically different from humans," He went on, "No mention of them being able to regenerate without using Materia, to grew new organs. What did we found in North Crater, then? What _was_ that creature?" He bowed his head, looking to his scattered notes, "And what have I done when approved the Projects?"  
"I... I don't think it is that bad," Ifalna told him, putting aside her work and moving closer to her mentor. She put her hand on his arm and said softly, "Hollander's scans now show that the children are developing normally, and Hojo's reports say the same. I think, they will be alright."  
"I hope you are right," He said, smiling at her, and took her hand in his own. "But I'm going to veto any continuations of Jenova Project until we know _what exactly_ we are dealing with."

...

In the middle of December, they received two reports from Banora, with a few days difference. Hollander's Project G resulted in birth of two normal children. Their tissue contained some of modified Jenova's cells, but their appearance, behaviour, reflexes, blood levels - everything was perfectly average. Both boys were to be put in their respective families, where they would grow up under constant observation of Shin-Ra Science Department. Any further experimentations on them were vetoed by Professor Faremis.

Hojo's Project S, according to his reports, was proceeding smoothly. He reported all well, and the child was developing normally. It was also a boy.

...

The New Year Eve went without notice; Ifalna didn't even remember what the day it was, until they came out of the Temple and she checked the radio telegraph; there were two congratulatory telegrams - one from Banora, where Hollander was finalizing his work, and one from Shin-Ra Central.  
Hojo and Crescent did not send anything.

...

"You were right," The message from Lucrecia said, a week after New Year, "It was a mistake."  
"What do you mean," Ifalna sent back.  
"Project S. It must die."  
After that, Lucy did not answer.

...

By the middle of January they reached the deepest chambers of the Temple. 

The murals there showed some kind of rite: Cetra, praying at the altar; a shining light, descending before them and dividing into three parts; a woman holding white orb, a man holding grey orb, and a black spindle-shaped form between them.

Gast bent down to look at the runes below the pictures.  
"Incredible," He muttered. "This needs more research, of course, but... It seems to be a story of creation - or, rather, an _acquisition_ , - of very powerful Materia."  
"What kind of Materia?" Ifalna asked a few minutes later, when Professor did not elaborate, lost in his own thoughts.  
"Ah!" He exclaimed. "I'm sorry, it's not easy to read these. This one," - He pointed at the white circle in hands of the woman, - "Is `Cleanse`, or, if I'm not mistaken with the meaning of this rune here, it could be read as `Holy`'.  
"Holy?" She went closer, looked at the mural.  
"Yes, I think this is it. And this one," - He pointed at the rune, shaped like two vertical petals with a dot between them, "Reads as `Keeper` or `Protector`, so this inscription, I believe, tells us that a woman, - or, I'd say, the most wise woman, and very skilled with magic, - was chosen as a keeper of this Materia."

"So, they created a powerful Holy Materia," Ifalna provided, when Gast just again seemed to forget about her presence.  
"Ah, did I say they created it? No, no," He shook his head and looked at his assistant, smiling. "They were _granted_ with it. A most powerful cleansing spell that ever existed, created by the Planet itself and given to the race of Cetra. Unfortunately," He touched one of the runes with his forefinger, "Materia so powerful could not be created without something that would balance such an act."

 _"The Great Scales,"_ Her grandmother's voice whispered at the edge of her conscience, _"This man is clever indeed."_

For several moments he was silent, tracing the runes with his finger, and then continued, "The price of the creation of ultimate protective Materia, was a simultaneous creation of its counterpart, the ultimate destructive one." His finger paused on the last rune. _"Meteor."_  
Ifalna looked at the opposite wall, where murals depicted the Temple, and praying people, and a meteor falling. Following her gaze, Gast sighed and said, "Yes. This is the summoning of the Meteor. The Cetra did not trust even the best among themselves with keeping this Materia, and so they hid it." He returned to the inscription. "The Keystone you found is the third Materia. Here it is labelled with the rune that reads `Key` - or `Answer`, depending on context. The most powerful wizard among the Cetra was keeping - and guarding - it. I wonder, how did it end up in Cosmo Canyon. Where exactly did you find it?" He glanced at his assistant curiously.  
"I... I have bought it from a stranger," She said, looking away, "He didn't know what it was."  
Gast sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Well, I suppose," He said, voice betraying his sadness, "This means their race is definetely extinct. I could not believe they would leave something so important without protection." Looking up at the mural depicting the woman holding white orb, he added, "Where could White Materia be now?.. Was it also left unprotected?.."  
Ifalna remained silent. The said Materia was hidden in the locket on her chest, secure under the layers of clothes.

When they began to walk back to the entrance, she asked her Professor, "You didn't take any pictures of the murals and did not write anything in your notebook. Why?"  
He smiled at her, and answered quietly, "There is a kind of knowledge that is too dangerous to be put on paper. Notes and photographs could fall into wrong hands. Actually," He shook his head, looking at the stone floor, "I think it would be better if we never came here at all."  
"Do you not trust Shin-Ra with this knowledge?" Ifalna asked.  
"I would not trust _anyone_ with it, myself included," Was his answer.

 _"Your man is not only clever, he has all chances to become wise,"_ Her grandmother's whisper rose above the murmur of Spirits, _"You have chosen well, child."_  
Ifalna turned her head away from Gast, heat creeping up her face. She hoped her ears were not as brightly red as they felt.  
"He's not my _man_ ," She whispered back. "He's my _mentor_."  
A faint impression of old woman's smile, a sound of her amused laughter. Apparently, she could not fool even a long-dead Cetra.

...

Later that night, when everyone was already asleep, Ifalna heard a chirr of the radio telegraph apparatus printing something.  
Another message from Lucrecia. She decoded it and stared at the words.  
"We created a monster", it said, "I will kill it."  
She rechecked her coding table. It was correct.  
The apparatus chirred again.  
This message did not need decoding. It contained only three characters.  
 _"SOS"._

"Gast! Professor! Wake up!"  
The scientist grumbled something unintelligible, then stirred and sat up. "Ifalna?" He said, frowning, "What happened?"  
"Something's wrong in Nibelheim! They've sent SOS!" Ifalna was shaking, clutching pieces of paper tape in her hand.

Five minutes later, Faremis sent a request to headquarters to investigate what happened to the team in Nibelheim.  
An hour later he received an answer.  
Apparently, Doctor Crescent had an emotional breakdown due to her hormonal changes and that was the reason for the message. Now she was sedated and resting. Otherwise, everything was fine.

Ifalna was not convinced by that explanation. At last, she did what she should have done from the very beginning; she told Gast about Lucrecia's coded messages and showed them to him. He listened to her, examining the pieces of paper, his expression growing darker with every sentence. When she finished, he looked longingly at the dark shape of the Temple and said, "We are returning to Nibelheim."  
He never reprimanded her for withholding important information, and it made Ifalna's remorse even sharper.

...

The road back took far less time than their travel to the Temple, yet Faremis' group got to the shore only a couple of weeks later. The report of Sephiroth's birth arrived while they still were in the middle of jungle.  
On February 12th, the ship set sail to Costa del Sol.  
When disembarked there a week later, they received a message that dr. Lucrecia Crescent died due to postnatal complications.

Ifalna did not believe it. She asked the Spirits, and they found no trace of Lucy's essence in the Lifestream; she was hiding somewhere, not quite dead and not quite alive. But even the Spirits did not know what exactly happened to her and where she was now.  
Four days later, they returned to Nibelheim.

...

Her room was empty; no one lived there while she was absent. She left her bag beside the bed and went out. Hearing the voices coming from another wing of the Mansion, she followed them to Gast's old room. Professor Faremis and Doctor Hojo were standing in the corridor, talking; she glimpsed something unfamiliar through the open door and entered.

The room changed - the most obvious change was a neonatal ICU, or "incubator", beside the wall. She went closer, peeked through the glass. Inside, a very small child was sleeping, his tiny fists clenched, legs folded frog-like. She stared at the baby for several seconds, before understanding who he was. Lucrecia's son, Sephiroth did not look like a mix of human and deadly alien he really was; he looked like an ordinary newborn, with too-red skin and too-thin limbs and tiny white dots on his small nose. The only unusual thing was the colour of his short, mussed hair.  
White.

The steps sounded in the dark passage outside; Gast and Hojo walked into the room, talking quietly. Half-listening to them, Ifalna continued to observe the boy.  
"...Tried to kill the foetus, kill herself, what would you expect me to do?"  
"At the very least, I would expect you to report any complications, not to hide them..."

The small, sleepy face had the same displeased expression as Lucy's when she slept, and Ifalna's eyes filled with tears. This tiny being was the only living thing left of her friend.

Gast went to Ifalna, stopping beside her.  
"The child needs to be moved to better facility," He said. "Here we could not provide him with the care he needs at the moment. I will take him to Midgar, while you are completing your work here."  
"He is strong enough," Hojo countered, "The experiment..."  
Professor interrupted him.  
"He is a human being, and we should treat him that way, no matter the importance of the _experiment_."

The baby stirred, probably disturbed by the voices. His eyes cracked open: dark grey with a shade of brown and thin rings of green around the slit-like pupils. He frowned, drawing his white eyebrows together and trying to focus his wandering eyes on her, then yawned and stretched, flailing his arms and tucking his legs closer.  
Ifalna smiled, wiping away tears from her cheeks. Regardless of the origin and nature of this baby, he deserved to live and to be loved. The Spirits agreed with her; this child needed all the love and care that could be given to him.

Even if he would never be entirely human, he still could have a happy life.  
Being not really a human herself, Ifalna knew that perfectly.


End file.
